12 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

1. Do both sides do "it"? 

   No.

   Today's Republican Party is acting in a way that defies all historic norms. We saw it with the GOP's gun law obstruction, the Violence Against Women Act obstruction, the sequester obstruction, Supreme Court obstruction, minimum wage obstruction, 9/11 first responder obstruction, government shutdown obstruction, immigration reform obstruction, Chuck Hagel's confirmation obstruction, Susan Rice secretary of state obstruction, paid leave obstruction, Hurricane Sandy emergency relief obstruction, the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act obstruction, and the consistent obstruction of judicial nominees.

   Even with that black man finally leaving their White House, I wouldn't expect Republicans to start governing and legislating rather than obstructing, dismantling and defunding. 

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2. This won't work but will provide great fodder for Dems in the general who will gleefully point to all the Rs who desperately tried to dump their own candidate along with ads featuring all the things Rs like Ryan have said about Trump while still supporting him. My faves would be those who claimed he isn't qualified to be Commander in Chief and doesn't have the temperament to be trusted with the nuclear codes but now support him anyway. Very patriotic.

   But here's a last desperate stand Dump Trumpers are floating that Dems can have endless fun with.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dump-trump-unruh-rules_us_57675d8ae4b0fbbc8beac99c?section=

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3. Oh and it looks like the  unrelenting attacks on Obama by Rs from Trump to McCain for the Orlando shootings and pretty much everything else are not having the desired effect. Obama's RCP  average approval rating as of Saturday and Sunday has shot up even more. All the way to +4.8. Can’t remember how far back you have to go for an RCP average that high. Maybe Rs should try something else?

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4. Dunno if you're a Cleveland fan, BC, but any time a team can rally from a 3-1 deficit and go the distance, it's a win for the underdogs.   Congratulations to the Cleveland Cavaliers and the redoubtable LeBron James.

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   1. Not particularly, nor particularly a LeBron fan but his Cavs earned it and deserved it and LeBron gave his all to bring it home. I'm happy for the city and for the former Nuggets on the team, especially Mosgov who deserves better than what he got from the Nuggets and, after a great first season with the Cavs, what he got from them this year.  If he hadn't won a ring with this team this season he might never have had another chance as he'll probably be sent elsewhere and what are the chances it will be a team that's going to win the championship any time soon?

      Happy to see him get a ring and even happy for the aggravating former Nugget JR who does seem to have finally bought a clue and started playing smart for the first time in his career. LeBron obviously a better influence than Carmelo ever was.  

      I was initially rooting for the Warriors but they barely made it past OKC and by game 7, I was rooting for the Cavs to make history as the first team ever to fight back from being down 3 to 1 in the NBA finals.

      It was a thrilling close game all the way, exactly what an NBA final game should be. The beat up Warriors didn't have it and their top of the marquee stars didn't rise to it the way the Cavs stars, led by a superhuman James, did. The way he broke down sobbing afterward shows how intensely he had given his all and then found some more. And not just for himself but for Cleveland.

      We also got to see James and Love hugging, not something you're going to see every day, probably never again, probably won't ever play together again.

      Even got a kick out of the fact that Dante Jones, a former Nugget who was a good player and team mate but had fallen on hard times in his pro career, will be getting a ring. 

      Congrats to Cleveland and to the Cavs. It would have been a shame if a last minute basket or two had given it back to the Warriors because the Cavs definitely deserved it more. Congrats to the NBA too. Hell of a season. Hell of a play offs. Hell of a finals. 

      But soon, when the draft is over, the dread dark time of NBA withdrawal. At least I'll get a lot of reading done well my better half watches nothing but every long boring baseball game available while the Rockies tank as usual.

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      1. My sympathies on that.   I taped the Broncos Super Bowl victory and view it about every couple months when I need a fix.  Maybe espy or someone will replay the NBA championship andI'll catch it belatedly.  How often does the underdog really win in this country?

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         1. We're not sports fans, except for politics (we tell people that it's our spectator sport) but the NBA win is kinda cool this year. Did you know this is the first pro championship of any kind that Cleveland has won since, like 1967 or thereabouts? I'm sure they think it's about time.

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            1. That would be 1964 but pretty close and I'm glad you think it's cool.

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5. My Veterans for Hillary cap arrived.  Draft Dodger Donald can eat my shorts!

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6. The Dismal Math of Mayhem

   How realistic is Donald Trump's plan to curb mass killings by encouraging barflies to carry guns?  It depends on whether you are considering only mass killings or the ordinary mayhem of American life.

   Let's say that ten of the victims at Pulse were packing heat.   The killer can probably knock off ten victims before the good guys with guns identify him.  Their wild vollies kill ten more innocent bystanders before they finally drop the bad guy, who has killed five more in the process.  Net death toll 25 innocents and one bad guy.  A real gain, right?

   If this was the only scenario for gun violence, sure.  But there are thousands of bars and every night there are thousands of bar fights.   Fans in a Denver bar once killed a patron who switched off the Broncos game on TV [an incident classified as suicide by Orange.]

   Those thousands of bar fights produce thousands of bloody noses, an occasional broken jaw but only rarely a fatality, because only rarely do the brawlers have guns.  Arm America's drunks and you'll have many more killings every night.   That's why even the NRA wants to keep guns out of bars.   Only Donald Trump wants to arm drunks.

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   1. Apparently drunks in bars classify as something other than "good guys", at least today.

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      1. Even the NRA leadership isn't for armed barflies. Which is interesting since it means they know they're full of it when they defend second amendment rights as absolute.

         Since they constantly complain about banning weapons from places like schools and churches as creating gun free zones just asking to be hit, I guess they must be OK with bars as gun free zones and drinkers as potential victims.

         Or maybe they just have enough sense to know that when they want to enjoy an adult beverage out and about they don't want to be surrounded by their own drunken armed NRA members.

         Either way, Trump's latest pearl of wisdom is out there even by their standards. 

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